Fake Newspaper Stories King Tut's Golden Typewriter

About a story written by Charles Langdon Clarke which claimed that a golden typewriter was discovered in King Tut's tomb.

MEMORABLE NEWSPAPER STORIES THAT NEVER HAPPENED

6. KING TUT'S GOLDEN TYPEWRITER Toronto Mail and Empire, c. 1922

Charles Langdon Clarke was an old hand at hoaxing readers. He once fooled fundamentalist Christians into believing that the fossil of the whale that might have swallowed Jonah had been unearthed. His best hoax, however, was a serious-looking article headlined KING TUT'S GOLDEN TYPEWRITER. The article appeared after archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the almost untouched tomb of the Egyptian pharoah Tutankhamen, who lived about 1350 B.C., in the Valley of the Kings. Among the priceless treasures entombed with the monarch, Clarke said, was a miraculous golden typewriter. This ancient and impossible instrument (How to print hieroglyphics with typewriter keys? How to make a typewriter big enough to hold them all?) was so exciting to a rival editor that he sent a reporter to interview Egyptologist C. T. Currelly about the find. At that point Clarke admitted that he had faked the story.

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